


Ghostly Entities

by theTabularium



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Platonic Relationships, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 01:17:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1839109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theTabularium/pseuds/theTabularium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One can only run so long from ghosts. Eventually they catch up and the questions they ask will always be hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghostly Entities

**Author's Note:**

> One-shot. A very short work about chasing ghosts and being chased by them. Lyrics taken from SBTRKT's 'Trails of the Past' as a prompt.

_I was always floating around the city._

_Go with the flow without ever knowing where I wanna be._

_So I got into crazy situations._

_A loyal soldier who acts, who acts, who acts- But never asks._

_The ghoulish entities, they come floating through the walls._

_Ghostly enemies, they come floating through you door,_

_From the past and they're somewhere right before you_

_Like the Ghost of Christmas Past._

 

He ran. He dragged that man out of that fucking river, paused long enough to make sure he was breathing, and he ran. Stumbled at first, but he'd taken worse and lived.

He ran from the usual: the authorities, the snaking remnants of Hydra and from everyone in the whole damn city. But he ran from more then that. He was running from that feeling in his gut, the flickering memories and emotions like barbs of shrapnel woken by a name.

_Bucky._

He shuddered. It had persisted, raging like a coal seam fire within his mind.

Programming broke down. Roughing it was easy enough, well practiced. He curled in warehouses, skulked in the subway tunnels, always just out of sight. He ran in circles, wandering, waiting for some directive but none came. No matter how many trains he watched from the shadows, preparing to jump aboard, no matter how many unwatched cars his predatory gaze settled on, no matter what, he couldn't leave. He haunted the city like the ghost of that name haunted him.

He grew desperate. His defaults couldn't be met. He had nobody to report to, nobody to wipe this terrible plague of emotions with a mouthguard and blissfully mind-deadening pain. He was terrified to find himself longing for the freezing chill of cryosleep; perhaps that hellish cold could quench this fire. But he had no iced tomb to return to.

In the end he did the only thing he could think to.

\---

Steve returned to his apartment late. The meeting had run over by half an hour. For all his compliments and denial, Sam was as good a speaker as he was.

Muffled noises of evening news came from the neighbouring flat but Agent 13 had moved on. The new neighbours were nice enough, what little of them he saw. He didn't care if they too were assigned to watch him, he'd passed caring when the Insight fleet fell in flaming tatters from the sky. Let them watch him, it didn't matter.

The apartment was quiet as he entered. Of late he hadn't had it in him for music. Once the sun settled his mind turned to ghosts. Steve locked the door behind him and shrugged off his jacket. Midway he froze, something raising the hairs on his neck.

The apartment was dark and cool- too cool. The chilled night air was scented with the city outside.

_I thought Fury got that window fixed?_ The man's brows drew. _Natasha._ He stalked light-footed down the hall, reaching instinctively for his shield but grasped air. It was gone. _Oh, she did not take that!_

Steve readied himself to step into the lounge and into whatever the Widow had planned to spring on him but suddenly halted. If Romanov had broken in he wouldn't know she was there. She was far too good to leave a window open.

Tension drew his hands up into guard. Drawn tight as a spring, Steve took a breath and turned the corner. His hands dropped.

Both men froze.

The shadowed figure on the seat looked bad, worse even then when Steve had dragged him from Hydra's dungeons. There was no aggression in him, just tiredness in every line of his stance. A tattered jacket hung from his shoulders, cold metal glinting from the torn sleeve. A harrowed gaze met his with desperate intensity from under a fringe matted with god only knew what.

Steve forced himself to relax, to slow his heart beating like a hammer against his ribcage. He dared not move lest he send the other fleeing like a ghost out the still open window. So Steve took a slow breath, ignored the small part of him that readied for attack, quelled all the words that came flooding to his throat and waited.

His gaze dropped. Hard fingers drew across the shield in his lap with the soft rasp of metal on metal. The gaudy pattern drew the ghostly entity of some past self like a magnet. He'd tried ignoring it, forgetting but he couldn't. Nothing could exorcise it. He had to know. He looked back up at the waiting man, so alien in his familiarity. _He knows._

"Who is Bucky?" He asked.


End file.
